Well, maybe small-town Arkansas schools still use the same textbooks.
Given that WTAM’s non-sports programming is anchored by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, one can only imagine how cringeworthy the owners found the remark.
Good fucking God, I’m 45 and referring to someone as “colored” was way passé (as an acceptable term) in my time.
Nah, back then they put science in textbooks.
There are plenty of people lined up willing to take his job. The station has to trust someone who is reading the news live. How do they know what other “unintentional” insult he’d make on the air?
My kids who are older than this guy would never use that word, and probably have never even heard it.
I’ve seen the term in use, usually as self reference (e.g. it’s used by a person of color to describe themselves).
I seem to recall something similar involving a national news anchor or something. I think they kept their job after apologizing. I looked it up, and it was Amy Robach as a host on Good Morning America in 2016. She claims she meant to say “people of color.”
I agree that the term is outdated and should not be used.
The south I live in, sad to say, ‘colored’ is still used.
Mainly by older people.
I haven’t heard it recently because I haven’t been anywhere.
I heard it in the hospital in March. A white day nurse was describing the night nurse to me.
I cringed, but I wasn’t in any position to protest.
I am not trying to defend anybody or any word. I am just curious. Does anyone know exactly when, why, and how this word became offensive. I am just guessing, but I bet at one time using this word was a way of being polite before it got put on the euphemism treadmill. Is it because it was a term commonly used in the Jim Crow era to label waiting rooms, water fountains, rest rooms, etc.?
That is at least what its Wikipedia article says.
It’s so out of date in the US that if I heard it, I would assume the speaker was from South Africa.
You do realize that the 70s to today is the same difference as the 1920s to the 1970s right?
Can you imagine trying to explain to a hypothetical person from another planet who knew nothing about Earth why “colored” is offensive but “person of color” is not?
Typing this made me think of something. In twenty or thirty years “person of color” will probably be highly offensive.
I would always try to correct my father when he would slip and use the term “colored”, but I didn’t judge him too harshly considering he was born in the 40’s and some habits can be difficult to break, and he always was sorry for doing so. There is no excuse for someone in their 20’s who definitely didn’t encounter the word in everyday life growing up.
NM
NOT the Pit thread
Why would it? It’s a term that people of color chose for themselves, to express pride and ownership of their identity. Words like “colored” and the N word were used by white people* to make anyone of color into an “other” so they could lump them together and imply, or state outright, that this group of others was less human and less valuable. They are complete opposites in the way they are used.
*Black people might have used the word “colored” out of fear or to get along, but it’s not a term they picked for themselves.
“Hey look at that ‘guy of colour’” seems much the same.
I’m not sure what you think the great mystery is. One term has the historical baggage of social oppression, to label for the purpose of marginalization; the other does not.
I guess we will just have to wait twenty or thirty years to find out who was correct. The way that things like this evolve does not always follow a logical process.
I am not the one who is mystified. I was talking about a hypothetical person from another planet.
Really? So now you’re claiming that your post which said
…does not imply that you think the reason is hard to understand?